Design PLANT at Bangkok Design Week
At this year’s edition of Bangkok Design Week, Design PLANT’s exhibition, curated by Decha Archjananun of THINKK Studio, showcased a series of sustainable, nature-inspired pieces by a crop of emerging talents
Design PLANT was established in 2013 by five design studios based in Bangkok — Dots Design Studio, THINKK Studio, PDM Brand, Atelier2+ and Plural Designs — with the aim of facilitating the sharing of experiences and encouraging opportunities and collaborations in Thailand’s design industry. Over the years, the studios joined forces to put on various exhibitions to garner industry attention, but also tackle social challenges and current issues.
‘We believe that we’re more powerful when we team up to explore different interesting issues and exhibit together,’ says THINKK Studio co-founder Decha Archjananun. As part of the Bangkok Design Week 2021 programme, Design PLANT brought together more than ten designers and studios in an exhibition titled DOMESTIC. ‘We wanted to gain as much perspective as possible from local designers,’ Archjananun explains. ‘The more variety of works, the more interesting the exhibition is,’ he says of DOMESTIC, in which works were divided into ‘nature inspired’ or ‘metal inspired’.
The nature-inspired works explore the potential of local materials and the future of recyclable waste and by-products. Atelier2+’s Tribe to Town series of seating and a cabinet was created in collaboration with Ban Si Don Chai women's weaving group. Here, a traditional textile is given a modern, contemporary, with the project seen as an exchange between the city and the countryside. SARNSARD’s MITI screen features intriguing graphic patterns realised in thatch screw pine, while Kornkanok Deethongon experimented with palm oil thatch to create Glubbann, a series of window blinds and woven mats, and Sarunphorn Boonto’s playful bilid room divider uses gradated rattan. Exploring waste materials, Re.field turned rice straw, a by-product of rice production, into Rises of Rice, a collection of lamps and benches, while THINKK Studio presented Domestic Alternative Materials, an exploration of new materials produced from local waste.
Text / Yen Kien Hang
Images / Pisit Phanomupatham
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